ISSUE 1 Lotus-eater is based in Rome, Italy and publishes works in English and translations from the Italian Editor: Diana Mastrodomenico Assistant editors: Marco Costantini, Chiara Patrizi Italian poems translated by Diana Mastrodomenico This compilation copyright belongs to the Editor © Lotus-eater Literary Magazine 2014 © Copyright of all works remains with the contributors Do not copy or redistribute without permission Cover image © copyright Nicola Di Croce, 2014 lotus-eatermagazine.com facebook.com/lotuseatermagazine twitter.com/LotusEaterMag ISSUE 1 PROSE ELIZABETH GEOGHegAN 5 Cricket Boy MATTHEW J. HALL 9 The Fire and The Fox TONY MASTROIANNI 11 Nothing in particular CAITLIN RETTENMAIER 17 Chotto Matte RAQUEL HENRY 26 Burial CARLOS DEWS 27 Recoleta POETRY DANIEL ROY CONNELLY 37 To the war-torn poets whose hearts were hooped with steel Charles Try smile POLLY MUNNELLY 41 Full Moon Just Trees MARCO COSTANTINI 43 R.K. GOLD 45 Roaming Elephants VVXZZ 46 Beloved JÜRgeN OLSCHEWSKI 48 clerkheart GABRIELE MENCAccI AMALFITANO 49 Ode to Nostrils Letter of Ishmael, Gardener of the Desert Converted to Wisdom ANN THOmpSON 57 Haibun for an Awakening MARIA PAOLA LANgeRANO 58 My Evening Nein The Gift Blades of Grass Sacred and Profane Love INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS ELIZABETH GEOGHegAN 61 A Conversation with Charles Lambert about With a Zero at Its Heart GRegORY PELL 68 Something Unthinkable. A Review of La cosa inaudita by Elisabetta Motta CONTRIBUTORS 72 Prose Photo by Nicola Di Croce © N. Di Croce, 2014 ELIZABETH GEOGHEGAN Cricket Boy Cricket Boy has looked in the face of I shook my head. death. It only makes him horny. He calls “Would you like some?” me his Blow Job Queen and says, “Those I scrawled the writer’s number on a Manchester girls haven’t got a thing on coaster and slid it over the bar to him. you.” “Brilliant,” he said, nodding. Four a.m. and the telephone wakes me. A few days later Cricket Boy made I get up and go to the window, see the call, chatted with the foot fetishist Cricket Boy cradling his cell phone, the and wangled my real number out of first snowflakes of inevitable winter him. fluttering around him. When I unlock “Your boyfriend said you’d be getting the door, he stumbles down the narrow off work about now.” hallway of my apartment, knocking the I knew it was him, what with the accent artwork with his shoulders. I brush past and all. “He’s not my boyfriend.” him and climb back under the comforter. “Perfect. So let’s have a drink.” He kneels beside my bed and says, Not that he’d asked me on a proper “I only called you because I wanted to date, but I hadn’t expected him to be with fuck.” four of his friends when I arrived. They “I only opened the door because I were all artists, which is to say they were wanted to tell you to fuck off—but since carpenters. I’ve always had a thing for you’re here—” construction workers—love, love, love Thing is, Cricket Boy can’t get it up. power tools and the smell of sawdust, I start thinking the reason for it is grief. a beat-up Ford F250—good thing, as I His dad died of a heart attack three spent the rest of the night being hit on weeks ago, his sister died of cancer four by the carpenter-artists during which days later. He was just off the plane time Cricket Boy sat with his back to me from two funerals in England when I and chatted up the waitress. met him. But it isn’t grief. It’s Guinness. Dan bought my drinks and Riley lit He went straight from the airport to my cigarettes. Boris tried to lure me his neighborhood pub. I was there with into the bathroom with coke. Wesley my buddy, a writer who writes about managed to flirt with me while making women’s feet. excuses for his friend. Cricket Boy was slurring when he “He’s had a rough time,” he said, asked, “Got any English in you?” leaning a bit too close and brushing the 5 ISSUE 1 hair back from my ear while he detailed “About what?” the diptych of deaths with a whisper. “Exactly,” I said. Around last call, I tapped on Cricket I lay in bed beside him, thinking Boy’s shoulder, “So, what’s your deal?” about death. Cricket Boy never men- “I used to play cricket. Now I’m a tioned his father, his sister. I wondered contractor.” if this was how he and his hooligan “Great,” I said. friends got women in bed. One tells the “Let’s get out of here.” sad sad story. The other takes her home. “Right.” But recent death or not, Cricket Boy and I had yet to close the deal. Cricket Boy dances a little dance, Waking in the turgid morning light waving a steak burrito in front of the anything seemed possible, and Cricket dog. He’s been MIA for over a week, then Boy got it going on. Then somewhere shows up after hours bearing a greasy mid-screw, he lost it, and with the lost white paper bag and talking about his erection—the lost condom. Twenty min- trip to New York. From the looks of it utes of groping and, finally, Cricket Boy he’s only been to El Chino. signed on for the search, tugging the Cricket Boy has lots of ideas about condom out of me, flaccid and pathetic, New York. “Best cabbies in the world,” he in his big working-class hands. tells me, taking a massive bite out of the I’ve had a little bit of death myself, burrito and dribbling sour cream on the but I don’t tell Cricket Boy. floor. “They all follow cricket—in Chicago nobody even knows what cricket it.” Cricket Boy empties the seal onto “Well,” I ask, “what is it?” Boris’ ugly 80’s chrome and glass cof- He claims if he could see paintings fee table and busies himself scraping at Boris’ house like the ones in The Met out lines with a battered ATM card. that he wouldn’t need to do drugs. Says Boris grabs the seal, licking the glossy he spent so many hours in the museum square of paper for such a long time that he had to buy his mate a lap dance to I think the newsprint will come off on make up for it. his tongue, but eventually he crumples it “Generous.” into a little ball and tosses it onto a stack “Oh, you,” he says, reaching to un- of magazines, the top one of which is button my jeans. called Juggs. Gesturing at the assortment Later, in bed, he tells me if it wasn’t of porn, he explains that he only buys it for the rent, he’d live in Manhattan. because he paints the female form. I tell him if it wasn’t for life, he’d live. Cricket Boy, rolled twenty to his nose, laughs so hard he chokes, scattering The first time we fucked, we didn’t. the coke all over the rug. His face goes I asked him if he wanted to talk. from its usual hungover British pallor 6 LOTUS-EATER to crimson as he hacks and coughs and is wearing a goofy purple fleece hat and waves his arms about, flinging himself holding a snowball, mock-threatening back into a peeling faux-leather recliner the woman with him. I shake a cigarette and nearly pulling a Len Bias—or the out of the pack and light it. When I look cricket equivalent—in his seat. Still talk- again, the woman’s got the hat on and ing about the female form, Boris crawls they are kissing. around on his knees trying to salvage “Let’s just say nothing’s up,” I tell what he can of the disseminated drugs, him. yanking up bits of shagged carpeting “You mean?” and examining the fibers with his clever “I mean there is nothing worse than artist’s eye. having a limp dick in your mouth.” When I’m reasonably sure I don’t “That so?” he asks, scribbling into need to call 911, I take a look at the can- his notebook. vases tacked to Boris’ wall and think, The truth is I don’t know why I’ve perhaps for the first time, that Cricket logged so many hours with cricket Boy. Boy may have had a point. Still, when I Maybe it’s the accent. Maybe I’m wait- try to imagine him wandering through ing to hear about all that death. Death the galleries of The Met, it’s a tough with an accent. image to conjure considering the tab- leau he’s creating now—sweating and Cricket Boy never wants to talk un- jonesing and speed-dialing everyone he less I’m asleep. knows on his mobile. He calls me late at night while he’s Cricket Boy will take me nowhere, eating take-out Chinese and watching which I guess is where I want to go. television. I smoke a cigarette in the dark and look out the window, try to decipher The second time around, same as it the jumble of words. ever was. When the ad for 1-900-WET-TALK I asked him if he wanted to talk. comes on, he tells me he has to go. “Are you taking the piss out of me?” Outside there is snow, drifting over “Taking the what?” the parked cars and swirling in the blue “Fuckin’ Americans—can’t even glow of the street lamps.